Paleoconservative Observations

Bacevich on Iraq

Andrew Bacevich–West Pointer, conservative, father of KIA 1st Lt. Bacevich–criticizes the war in a way that should be persuasive to conservatives, including conservatives like me who initially supported the war for punitive reasons. Namely, it’s now clearly a waste of resources and a strategic error to continue on this course. It’s important not to continue this path, even though leaving Iraq would violate a normally good means to discover good policy: staying would enrage liberals.

The costs to the United States of sustaining this dependency are difficult to calculate with precision, but figures such as $3 billion per week and 30 to 40 American lives per month provide a good approximation.

What can we expect to gain in return for this investment? The Bush administration was counting on the Iraq War to demonstrate the viability of its Freedom Agenda and to affirm the efficacy of the Bush Doctrine of preventive war.

Measured in those terms, the war has long since failed. Rather than showcasing our ability to transform the Greater Middle East, Operation Iraqi Freedom has demonstrated just the opposite. Using military power as an instrument for imprinting liberal values in this part of the world has produced a failed state while fostering widespread antipathy toward the United States.

Rather than demonstrating our ability to eliminate emerging threats swiftly, decisively, and economically—Saddam Hussein’s removal providing an object lesson to other tyrants tempted to contest our presence in the Middle East—the Iraq War has revealed the limits of U.S. power and called into question American competence. The Bush Doctrine hasn’t worked. Saddam is long gone, but we’re stuck. Rather than delivering decisive victory, preventive war has landed us in a quagmire.

I would add that the absolute worst reason to stay in this war is for some emotional notion of national honor and commitment to the troops, impulses that undergird the very unstrategic thinking John McCain and numerous buck sergeants. We don’t go to war to do the conquered a favor. We don’t stay to avenge deaths like some armed camp of Zulus. A nation goes sends its army to war to accomplish foreign policy goals. This same nation can and should withdraw these troops when it’s in our interests to do so, when those goals are out of reach, no longer important, or too costly. It’s not like Iraq is sacred American soil; this is a foreign land, half way around the world, in a very bad neighborhood, populated mostly by uncivilized people whom we do not understand and who do not understand or appreciate our soldiers’ sacrifices.

Sure, we can pig-headedly spend $20 or $30 trillion over another decade, but even if everything turns out for the best, it will be a strategic benefit worth some fraction of that. And then what? We’ll still have al Qaeda to worry about. We’ll still have North Korea. Our borders will be too porous. Our ranks of third world immigrants will remain too numerous. The Middle East will still have large numbers of pissed off young men who are given sanction to vent their anger by their religion. The deterrent value of staying or leaving is a wash. Iran knows we won’t easily commit to a similar adventure on its territory. Russia and China will still be ascendant in their spheres of influence. Oil will still be scarce and in the hands of unstable autocrats and their resentful subjects.

Vast swaths of people all around the world will not appreciate Iraq as a model, it ends up as stable as Pakistan or Indonesia when all is said and done. Instead of seeing idealistic U.S. sacrifices for democracy, most Arabs and Muslims will perceive a marginally successful bid for power and domination of Iraq’s oil wealth. Most of the worlds peoples will continue to be more passionate about religion, nationalism, ideology, wealth, prosperity, and tribalism than democracy and the rule of law. Not only that, they’ll treat these tangible goods as more desirable than democracy–whether originating from bloody revolutions at home, or imposed from without by an idealistic and ideological United States.

“Using military power as an instrument for imprinting liberal values in this part of the world has produced a failed state while fostering widespread antipathy toward the United States.”

I don’t doubt that the war in Iraq has produced widespread antipathy towards the US from the tyrants of Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc., their toadies and obedient subjects. So what?

And if Iraq is a failed state, well, …. we’re going to disagree over the meaning of that term. I suppose he wishes Iraq could be a strong, successful state like Myanmar or Zimbabwe. I know I often wish many residents of the US could live like Zimbabweans.

As for pulling out, I’m all for it: let’s exit the EU, Korea, Iraq and every other anti-American failed state. I certainly don’t want to spend one American life or one American dollar to promote democracy or freedom. Let the subjects peoples of the world rise up or not. They’ll get no help from us. The world can survive 4% free and 96% slave. As long as I’m in the free part.

No, if Myanamar is a dictatorship, why, the next thing you know they’ll conquer Europe like Hitler and attack us any day now.

Indeed, we can be free if much of the world is screwed, and it long will be, and we have little ability or will to change it, nor should we try. Does the notion of loyalty and duty to further the welfare of one’s own people matter to you?

The point of the Iraq War was to create this great, happy place with McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, elections, peace, order, prosperity, etc. Not only has it not impressed the “toadies” in the Middle East, but it’s tied up large portions of our armed forces in the process.

I don’t understand the Zimbabwe analogy. It’s fucked. So is Iraq. But Iraq is screwed on our watch. And it’s screwed very badly when the goal was to make it the EPCOT of democracy in the Middle East. So it’s a strategic failure. A friendly Saddam-style dictator who let us have a few bases, killed the Ba’athists, and kept an eye on Iran would be far more preferable. Plus, even our “friends” there are sectarian Shia kleptocrats. It’s a dump; it always will be. And the purple fingers don’t impress me, not least since the not-so-purple heads are routinely cut off by Shias, Iraqi cops, Sunni extremists, and anyone else pissed off at anyone else in that dump.

As for pulling out, I’m all for it: let’s exit the EU, Korea, Iraq and every other anti-American failed state.

So am I.

I know I often wish many residents of the US could live like Zimbabweans.

It’s not that I think that our way of life is so bad that I don’t want to impose it on the Iraqis. It is that I don’t think that we are able to ge the Iraqis to live our way of life, and the attempt to do so will cause more harm than good.